Educational partnerships

Posing during a gallery tour talk in the exhibition, Us Them We | Race Ethnicity Identity, are (l-r): Matthias Wascheck, Jean and Myles McDonough Director of the Worcester Art Museum; Nancy Kathryn Burns and Toby Sisson, exhibition co-curators; and David Fithian, President of Clark University. Photo credit: Steven King, Clark University.

Educational partnerships are more than meets the eye

Gallery tours and lectures are some of the most visible and valued manifestations of our many partnerships with local colleges and universities. Yet, these synergistic relationships go even deeper. Behind-the-scenes collaborations range from co-curating exhibitions and developing art history content to conserving the collection and maintaining the Museum Library. The results are richer experiences for WAM visitors, access to new scholarship and technology for staff, and exceptional learning and professional development opportunities for students and scholars. “This is the quintessential ‘win-win’ situation,” says Matthias Waschek, the Museum’s Jean and Myles McDonough Director. “The cross-pollination of ideas and perspectives between WAM and our educational partners is synergy at its best, contributing immeasurably to our collective knowledge and understanding of art. Without this, the Museum would not be able to achieve its mission.” Volumes could be written about the numerous partnerships between the Worcester Art Museum and educational organizations over the past 125 years. Generations of scholars, students, and Museum staff have been inspired by WAM’s collection in myriad ways and what it can teach us about the human condition and creative expression. Here is just a snapshot of the diversity of these collaborations and their transformational impact.

Expanding boundaries through collaboration Inviting professors and their students to contribute ideas and perspectives to shape a museum exhibition is both unusual and bold. Yet, over the years, WAM has worked with faculty and students at Clark University on numerous such projects. A recent example is Us Them We | Race Ethnicity Identity, an expansive exploration of diverse perspectives on identity that included an adjunct display of 12 student artworks. Created during a Clark University course taught by the exhibition co-curators*, the student works responded personally to objects in Us Them We—and expanded both their understanding and expression of identity. “The course pushed my boundaries in the work that I created. I’ve always been a portrait photographer, but this course helped me experiment and push the limits to what I thought I could make,” says Sam Damon, who participated as a Clark senior. Library partnership has broad reach The Museum Library is one of the most visible—and often invisible—educational partnerships at WAM. Founded in 1909 for the study and enjoyment of art history, the Library has been managed in collaboration with the College of the Holy Cross since 2001. This unique relationship allows the College to host the Library’s art history catalog of over 63,000 titles. It also provides many additional services, including access to over 50 worldwide digital research resources for anyone who needs them. Most of the 2,500 visitors and hundreds of researchers who request information from the Library each year may be unaware that this important art historical resource is available thanks to a longstanding collaboration with Holy Cross. (Read more about the Museum Library and how it is being transformed for the 21st century on page 12.)

Sharing technology enhances art and science In early 2020, when Objects Conservator Paula Artal-Isbrand needed to reconstruct missing fingers and toes on Edward Augustus Brackett’s life-size sculpture, Shipwrecked Mother and Child, she only had to go a block up Salisbury Street for help. Faculty and students in Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s (WPI) Laser Holography and Advanced Prototyping Labs worked with Artal-Isbrand to create new digits for the 19th-century marble sculpture using advanced 3D printing technology. The results were so realistic that Brackett himself would likely not notice that parts had been replaced. Through this real life, real art application, the WPI team also expanded their expertise, which will serve both current and future projects at WAM.

WAM as muse for new literary voices A different kind of collaboration focused on the age-old relationship between art and literature. Beyond the Frame: Celebrating a Partnership in Public Education and the Arts, published in May 2022, may be the first such project for WAM. Worcester State University (WSU), a longtime educational partner, invited eight New England writers and four WSU faculty members to reflect, in essays, on WAM artworks that inspire them. The eloquent volume honors an invigorating partnership and shared commitment to an education informed by the arts—and opens new windows into WAM’s collection through diverse voices.

Although representing just the tip of the iceberg for WAM’s many educational partnerships, these examples do reveal how important local colleges and universities are to the Museum fulfilling its mission—and how vital WAM is to these partners in providing a creative laboratory for experimentation and exploration.